Chattering classes point way to success

JOHN Munro likes to draw on a fairytale image to explain the plight of many young children who struggle to read and write. Talking and listening, he says, are literacy's ugly sisters.

This Cinderella metaphor highlights a serious issue. A simple inability to talk fluently is now recognised as a major factor in children underachieving, often with consequences that last a lifetime.

"Good language skills and the ability to communicate effectively are key foundations to students' capacity to learn," says Associate Professor Munro, head of exceptional learning and gifted education studies at the University of Melbourne's Graduate School of Education.

He says a fifth of children start primary school with weak verbal skills, putting them at higher risk of poor performance. Yet little attention has been paid to the oral language skills of young students. Speaking and listening have not been accorded the same significance as reading, writing, spelling and counting.

"Millions of dollars has gone into literacy programs, but if we don't have an essential oral base then the literacy results are not going to be achieved," Professor Munro says. "I could make exactly the same statement for numeracy."

These shortcomings in oral language can have a long-term influence — affecting friendships, social behaviour, self-confidence and identity.

Sharon Goldfeld, a paediatrician and senior research fellow at the centre for community child health at the Royal Children's Hospital, says the language experiences children have before the age of six help to form powerful brain connections used for language and thinking.

Young children need to develop the foundations for literacy — the ability to speak, listen, understand and watch — before they can learn to read and write, she says.

"Brain development research suggests that the first few years of life is when there is a rapid amount of brain wiring happening and we know that it occurs in response to your DNA make-up as well as the environment you are growing up in, so it makes sense that if you are being spoken to more often and if you're in an environment where there's a lot of reading that it is going to improve your language," Dr Goldfeld says.

Talking, singing and reading help the brain to develop this network of connections.

TALKING TIPS

*Help children to learn new words and build a richer vocabulary. Encourage them to name items, actions and use descriptive words.

*Encourage them to talk in sentences about experiences and events, expressing what they think and feel.

*Show them how to use a broader range of sentences when they are playing with toys, listening to a story or talking with others.

*Build their listening capacity. Share stories and play games in which they need to listen, respond to information and follow instructions.

*Help them listen for and use sound patterns in words. Encourage them to rhyme words, sing and read stories that have rhyming words.

*Teach them to ask different types of questions and to use questions to learn new ideas.

*Ask them to predict what could happen next when sharing an experience such as shopping or playing, reading them a story or playing with toys.

*Ask them to retell experiences. Show them photos of experiences you have shared or videos they have seen and ask them to say what happened.

SOURCE: John Munro, University of Melbourne.


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